There's a reason ambulance chasers like dogbitelaw.com use him as an 'expert'.
As Al Gore is to Global Warming, so Clifton is to dogs.
To deny that the Pit Bull is more capable of violence than your average dog is to engage in idiocy.
To deny that many Pit Bull owners procure the dog because of its reputation and capacity for violence is to deny reality.
http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/statistics.html
Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People, has conducted an unusually detailed study of dog bites from 1982 to the present. (Clifton, Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada, September 1982 to November 13, 2006; click here to read it.) The Clifton study show the number of serious canine-inflicted injuries by breed. The author's observations about the breeds and generally how to deal with the dangerous dog problem are enlightening.
According to the Clifton study, pit bulls, Rottweilers, Presa Canarios and their mixes are responsible for 74% of attacks that were included in the study, 68% of the attacks upon children, 82% of the attacks upon adults, 65% of the deaths, and 68% of the maimings. In more than two-thirds of the cases included in the study, the life-threatening or fatal attack was apparently the first known dangerous behavior by the animal in question. Clifton states:
“If almost any other dog has a bad moment, someone may get bitten, but will not be maimed for life or killed, and the actuarial risk is accordingly reasonable. If a pit bull terrier or a Rottweiler has a bad moment, often someone is maimed or killed—and that has now created off-the-chart actuarial risk, for which the dogs as well as their victims are paying the price.”
I am so glad that you brought up Merritt Clifton! He is the very reason I asked for reputable studies. No fault of your own, but let me fill you in on this person.
He has made a “study” based on numbers he collected and others he felt the need to leave out for some reason. There have been many professionals that have written about this study, because it is so far from the truth that it is laughable, and this man has exhibited a great deal of biased behavior, to the extent that people trying to contact him with additional reported attacks that he left out have said the man refused them.
This man, editor of a magazine devoted to pets, has no idea about dog breeds, their characteristics, their temperaments, or anything else. He is not an animal behaviorist, a biologist, or a geneticist. He is a journalist, and it shows.
In the same study you just posted, he is quoted saying that pit bulls have their tails customarily docked. Obviously he is mixing up the breeds. Pit bulls can sometimes have cropped ears, but they do not dock the tails. Presa Canarios are a very rare breed and have not been involved in enough attacks to even warrant their inclusion in the study, yet there they are with pit bulls and rottweilers. I will try to find some links to this when I get home this evening, because you will want to read what they have to say.
“You have presented nothing that proves my claims are wrong.”
Again, did you read the study I posted? Because if you haven’t, perhaps you should hold onto that thought and read it. It shows that pit bulls are second to labs in bites, and seventh in severity of bites. Why not just read it?
“According to the Clifton study, pit bulls, Rottweilers, Presa Canarios and their mixes are responsible for 74% of attacks that were included in the study, 68% of the attacks upon child”ren, 82% of the attacks upon adults, 65% of the deaths, and 68% of the maimings.”
You, who have ordered us to “stay on topic” just careened over the cliff[ton].
The subject is _pit bulls_; *not* “pit bulls, Rottweilers, Presa Canarios and their mixes”.
[whatever “mixes” means because most people don’t bother to tote around DNA swabs]
Posting this makes your argument ‘against us’ actually work in favor of what we keep trying to tell people.
Those “statistics” include 2 other, completely different breeds *and* “their mixes”.
No statistical conclusion about pit bulls can be fairly drawn whilst also including a hodge-podge of unknown inaccurate breed variables.
Few law authorities would have the breed knowledge to accurately identify a “pit mix” without performing DNA tests.
*Any* mixed breed dog with a “wide head” would be considered a “pit mix” by the ignorati.
A Lab mix might look like a pit mix.
*Any* Mastiff or Boxer in the woodpile, so to speak, would give a dog “that general look”.
I have dealt with the misidentification of breed mixes for years because I am involved with Ibizan rescue.
When “Bunny” got to the BOS ring at Westminster, suddenly our rescue was inundated by “Ibizan mixes” on PetFinder simply because of the “desirably exotic” factor.
Any dog with prick ears/long legs/long tail/red & white/yellow & white/pink nose/amber eyes [etc etc etc] was an “Ibizan mix”.
For years now, we have tried to educate shelter personnel on the sheer unlikelihood of having an “Ibizan mix” due to the fact of the small number of purebreds in the US, the disdain for mating “outside their own kind” and the simple fact that those who own purebreds are not inclined to allow their dogs to be mated, accidentally or otherwise to anything else but another Ibizan Hound.
Despite our efforts to educate, they still mislabel mixes.
Here are the latest batch:
Few, if any of those dogs truly resemble an Ibizan, as seen here:
http://file.walagata.com/w/the-salamander/jinn1.jpg
[we do have a few *real* Ibizans, namely Shay and Chevy available for adoption to responsible, vigilant, serious, sight hound knowledgeable people with securely FENCED YARDS, if anyone’s interested]
I’m also involved in Portuguese Podengos.
The bizarre things that show up as PPs on PetFinder rivals insanity.
Bottom line is, you cannot quote breed statistics -without- true and accurate identification of said breed.... for *any* breed.
